Modern Mining January 2016

COMMENT

Modern Mining on the road

O ne of the joys of my job is that while I’m often office bound, I also have regular excursions out of the office to visit mines and mining projects, both in South Africa and across border. One effect of the mining recession is that trips of this type are increasingly difficult to arrange, given the number of mines that have gone on to care and maintenance and the number of new projects that have either been cancelled or deferred. Having said this, I had a good run in the closing weeks of 2015 and the first full week of this year, visiting in relatively quick succession De Beers’ Venetia diamond mine in Limpopo Province, Northam’s Booysendal mine, which is on the Eastern Limb of the Bushveld Complex (the property straddles the border between Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces), and Cupric Canyon Capital’s Khoemacau cop- per project south of Maun in Botswana in the Kalahari Copperbelt. My Venetia trip was to view the prog- ress being made on the US$2 billion Venetia Underground Project (VUP), which will see the current open-pit operation being phased out in several years’ time and replaced by an under- ground mine. The project extends Venetia’s life into the 2040s – by which time it could be the only remaining De Beers’ mine in South Africa, given that the group’s only other producing asset in the country (now that Kimberley Mines has been sold) is the much smaller Voorspoed operation in Free State Province, which has a limited life ahead. I’m not sure exactly when Voorspoed is due to close but I doubt it will go much beyond the early 2020s, at least as a De Beers operation. The main contractor on the VUP is Murray & Roberts Cementation and in fact they organised my visit to the mine, which included an under- ground visit and the opportunity to talk to De Beers’ Christoff Kühn, Head of the VUP. Murray & Roberts Cementation also assisted with my visit to Booysendal, which could even- tually become one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines (and certainly the biggest on the Eastern Limb), given the size of its resource. Booysendal is, of course, a relatively new oper- ation, with milling having started in March 2013 and with more than 4,4 Mt having been milled to date. The really interesting thing about Booysendal is that – along with Bathopele near Rustenburg (currently in the Anglo American Platinum

stable but due to become part of Sibanye) – it is setting the pace in mechanisation in the underground mining sector, pointing the way forward for South Africa’s embattled platinum mining industry. My third visit – to the Khoemacau project in Botswana – was at the invitation of Sam Rasmussen, who runs Cupric Canyon’s opera- tions in Africa, and was made in the company of the Project Director, Rob Dey. Sam is an American but has considerable African expe- rience – he managed the Tenke Fungurume copper mine in the DRC – while Rob will almost certainly be well known to many readers of Modern Mining as he was at one stage Group Executive: Projects with Impala Platinum. This was a particularly interesting trip for me as I have been following developments in the Kalahari Copperbelt for several years now but without actually visiting the area – which is never an entirely satisfying situation. It was also my first visit to the bustling town of Maun in nearly 20 years, despite the fact that I fre- quently travel to Botswana. As luck would have it, I contrived to be in – or, more specifically, near – Maun on what was apparently the hot- test day in its history since records began! The mercury hit 42 deg on the day in question and I’m convinced that where I was – an hour’s drive to the south – was at least two or three degrees hotter still. The focus of Cupric Canyon’s efforts – through its subsidiary in Botswana, Khoemacau Copper Mining – is its Zone 5 deposit, which lies roughly halfway between Maun to the north and the northern boundary of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to the south. With most copper operations in Southern Africa strug- gling with a low copper price, it’s good to see that at least one new copper mine is due to go ahead in our region. Construction of the new mine – which will be an underground opera- tion – has not yet started but Cupric Canyon has no intention of dragging its feet and, all going well, is hoping to be in production around the middle of 2018. For readers wanting to know more about these projects, Khoemacau’s Zone 5, as well as the VUP, feature in this month’s round-up of ‘Top Southern African Mining Projects’ (see our cov- erage starting on page 32) while the Booysendal mine will be covered in our February issue, in which we will have a special focus on mecha- nisation in mining. Arthur Tassell

Construction of the new mine has not

yet started but Cupric Canyon has no intention of dragging its feet and, all going well, is hoping to be in production around the middle of 2018.

January 2016  MODERN MINING  3